


To Everything There is a Season

by Renata Lord (snowlight)



Series: Blood and Water [5]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Music, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-13
Updated: 2010-09-13
Packaged: 2017-10-11 17:40:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/114948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snowlight/pseuds/Renata%20Lord
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A moment between the brothers before a piano, after the funeral of their father.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Everything There is a Season

The funeral was frankly exhausting, and Sherlock wasn't feeling any better after taking that nap as ordered. The fog in his brain refused to disperse as if something sinister was hiding in there, waiting.

He was on his way to the kitchen for some black coffee when he came upon Mycroft in the living room, sitting before the Steinway with its lid uplifted but no sheet out. The black Savile Row suit looked awful on him. It really did.

He should have left his brother the way he found him, maybe go back to bed to think after a nice pot of coffee and a cigarette or two in the garden gazebo. Nobody would notice, as long as Mycroft didn't tell on him.

Instead Sherlock waded into the living room, hands in his pocket and with the kind of arrogant air only a proper thirteen-year-old could manage.

"Play something."

Mycroft didn't turn back to look at him, only gestured for him to come sit on the playing bench. He shrugged and sat.

"Close your bedroom window completely in this weather," said Mycroft after another stretch of silence. "The rain ruins the furniture, and Mrs. Livingston is forever complaining."

He'd forgotten how Mycroft could smell everything off him within seconds—Cigarette ash. Gunpowder. Bits of dark toffee. Wetness and rain.

"Play something," he repeated, this time more softly. "Too quiet in here." Even though outside it was pouring as if August had already come.

"And your violin?"

"I hate the violin," Sherlock said. It wasn't true, but it was okay to hate the violin.

Mycroft played something without sheets. It was a delicate aria, probably from Bach or Handel. Mycroft liked those two composers, as did Father—not that he'd ever heard the old man playing anything.

"That was terrible," he said after the short piece ended.

Mycroft let out a chuckle and clasped an arm around him. Sherlock shivered at the warmth but leaned into it, resting his head against Mycroft's left shoulder. The fog in his head was dissipating. Mycroft felt solid and real.

"Play something else," he murmured, closing his eyes.

His brother must have heard the unvoiced "one hand" at the end of that request, because Mycroft never let go of him while the lonely piano continued to sing. Sherlock recognized the next three pieces, all of which were in his own repertoire. Mycroft played them differently from the way he did, but it was comforting all the same.

Sherlock was speculating which piece might be the fourth when he drifted into a long and dreamless sleep.

When he woke up again, he was lying in his own bed, and it was already late into the evening. The window next to his bed remained open, though the rain had for once stopped.

That was the very last time his brother would play the piano for him in some fifteen years. However, even with a mind like his, Sherlock had no way of knowing this back then. Even if he could have a glimpse into that future, he would not have believed it for all the summer rain drenching the lion statues on Trafalgar Square, in mourning.

*

The End


End file.
